The Night Two Warships Became One: USS Borie’s Unthinkable Close-Range Battle North of the Azores
The North Atlantic in November does not feel like a battlefield at first. It feels like a world that wants you gone—wind that cuts through clothing, waves that erase the horizon, darkness so complete it makes distance meaningless. That was the setting in the early hours of November 1, 1943, when the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Borie (DD-215) found itself chasing a radar contact north of the Azores.
What happened next became one of the strangest surface actions of the Battle of the Atlantic: a destroyer and a German U-boat colliding so violently that the ships briefly locked together, forcing a frantic close-range fight that looked less like twentieth-century naval warfare and more like something out of an older era.
It was a battle of radar, depth charges, gunfire, and nerve. It ended with the U-boat sunk—and the destroyer fatally damaged, later abandoned and scuttled by her own side.
A Mission Built for the Dark
In 1943, the U.S. Navy had begun deploying “hunter-killer” groups—formations centered on escort carriers that could provide aircraft coverage by day, while destroyers and escorts hunted submarines by night. USS Card was the flagship of Task Group 21.14, one of these aggressive anti-submarine groups operating in the North Atlantic.
That structure mattered, because U-boats were not just sinking ships—they were trying to starve Britain and disrupt Allied logistics at the exact moment the Allies were preparing for future operations in Europe. The Atlantic supply line was the artery of the war effort. Protecting it wasn’t glamorous, but it was decisive.
On the night in question, Borie was detached from Card’s group to pursue a submarine contact. The sea state was severe, the visibility poor, and the conditions exactly the kind that made anti-submarine work unpredictable.
The Contact That Wouldn’t Disappear
According to later accounts, Borie gained contact and attacked. One of the most striking elements of the action was the sequence of events that forced the German submarine U-405 to the surface. U-405 was a Type VIIC U-boat, commanded by Korvettenkapitän Rolf-Heinrich Hopman, and it was operating with a full crew—dozens of men trained for this kind of fight.
A submarine commander’s preferred world is the one below the surface, where stealth and positioning decide the engagement. When a U-boat is forced into a surface fight, the situation changes fast: the submarine loses its greatest advantage, but it is still dangerous—especially at close range, where even a single well-placed attack can cripple a pursuer.
That night, heavy weather created a chaotic, compressed fight. Borie’s crew had to manage the tension that always haunts anti-submarine operations: when you are close enough to strike, you are also close enough for something to go wrong.
The Decision That Broke Every Rule: Ram
At a critical moment, Borie’s commanding officer—Lt. Cmdr. Charles Hutchins—chose an option that naval warfare had mostly left behind: ramming.
Ramming was not a tactic modern officers planned to use lightly. In the era of torpedoes and rapid-fire guns, intentionally colliding with an enemy ship was a last resort. It risked crippling your own vessel. But in a rapidly evolving engagement, with the submarine maneuvering and the sea doing its own violent work, Hutchins ordered the destroyer forward.
What happened is one of those moments that reads like legend until you see how consistently it’s described in multiple historical treatments: a wave and angle of approach combined so that USS Borie rode up onto the U-boat’s deck, high-centering the destroyer on top of the submarine for a short, surreal interval.
For roughly ten minutes, the two ships were locked together—steel grinding against steel, both vessels battered by waves, crews suddenly forced into a close-range struggle in the open air.
A Close-Range Fight in the Searchlight
At this distance, the engagement became intensely personal. The destroyer’s main guns could not always be brought to bear effectively at such an odd angle. Meanwhile, the submarine’s exposed deck positions—normally used only briefly—became the focal point of desperate attempts to return fire and regain control of the fight.
Borie’s searchlight, used to illuminate the U-boat in the darkness, turned the scene into a harsh stage. In heavy seas, under that beam, movement became visible—and therefore vulnerable. Naval historians often point out that, for the submarine crew, the open deck was both opportunity and trap: it was the only place from which to fight effectively on the surface, but it was also exposed.
The outcome of that phase was brutal in a way that close-range surface engagements often are. U-405 suffered heavy casualties, and its ability to control the fight deteriorated rapidly.
Separation, Maneuver, and the Final Blow
Eventually, the ships broke apart. But separation did not mean safety. Both were damaged, and the engagement continued as Borie tried to finish the submarine while also protecting itself.
Accounts emphasize Hopman’s skill in maneuvering his crippled boat, using the submarine’s turning characteristics and the confusion of weather and visibility to complicate the destroyer’s firing solutions.
Still, the cumulative damage on U-405 was decisive. The submarine ultimately sank, with no survivors recovered.
This final detail is one of the most haunting parts of the story. In many naval actions, survivors are picked up when the fighting ends. Here, the conditions were too dangerous and the tactical situation too uncertain. The North Atlantic—cold, violent, and indifferent—claimed the rest.
The Victory That Still Cost a Ship
In most war stories, sinking the enemy is the end. For USS Borie, it was only the beginning of a second fight—against flooding, broken structure, and worsening seas.
The collision and close-range combat had damaged Borie so severely that she could not be saved. With the weather still extreme and towing impractical, the destroyer’s crew was ordered to abandon ship. Many were rescued, but not all.
The next day, with Borie drifting and beyond salvage, she was deliberately sunk by another U.S. destroyer to prevent her from becoming a hazard or falling into enemy hands.
The result was a rare wartime ledger entry: one U-boat destroyed, but at the price of losing the attacking destroyer as well.
Why This Battle Still Matters
It’s easy to treat the story as an oddity—an “only in war” anecdote about a destroyer ending up on a submarine. But for historians of the Atlantic campaign, the engagement highlights several enduring truths about naval warfare:
1) Technology doesn’t eliminate chaos.
Radar, sonar, depth charges—these tools shaped the fight, but heavy weather, shifting visibility, and split-second decisions still dictated outcomes. Even the best systems can’t eliminate the unpredictability of the sea.
2) “Last resort” decisions sometimes become the right ones.
Ramming was not a preferred tactic. It was a choice made under pressure. Yet, in this case, it helped create the conditions that broke the submarine’s ability to fight effectively.
3) The Atlantic was as much an enemy as the U-boats.
Even after the shooting stopped, survival depended on sea state and rescue capability. The environment routinely turned victory into tragedy.
4) The hunter-killer system was working—but never without cost.
Task Group 21.14 and similar groups represented a shift from passive defense to active pursuit. The goal wasn’t just to protect convoys—it was to reduce U-boat numbers through offensive action.
This night showed how aggressive that fight could become when contact turned into close-range combat.
A Human Story Under Steel and Spray
Perhaps the most lasting reason this battle is remembered is that it compresses the Atlantic campaign into a single, unforgettable scene: two ships locked together in darkness, sailors forced into improvisation, command decisions made under violent uncertainty, and an outcome that was both victory and loss.
For Lt. Cmdr. Hutchins and his crew, it was the kind of night that ended careers, changed lives, and left memories that never fully fade. For Hopman and his men, it was the final chapter of a patrol that ended not with escape into deep water, but with a surface fight no submarine crew ever wanted.
And for the war at sea, it was a reminder that even in the age of modern weapons, battles could still devolve into something raw and close—where the outcome depended as much on nerve and timing as it did on steel and machinery.
